


By Your Side

by Vita_S_West



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Bonding, Conversations, Couch Cuddles, F/M, Flynn Friday, Hurt/Comfort, Meaningful conversations, Some Descriptions of Violence, Some angst, channel surfing, do we detect a SPARK?, spoiler: ye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 02:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15281817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vita_S_West/pseuds/Vita_S_West
Summary: Lucy had forgot all about that Bond movie that she's a character in. At least, she had until she and Flynn stumble across said movie while channel-surfing one night. Meaningful conversations and cute bonding to follow the jokes, bitterness, & sarcasm.





	By Your Side

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after season 2, ep6 The King of the Delta Blues. Meaningful conversations and cute bonding at the end. (This is my firct Garcy fic. I love them so much !)

Lucy is channel surfing when someone comes in. She doesn’t need to turn around to know that it’s Flynn. She can recognize him by his sigh, by the shuffle of his feet across the dusty floor, and by the clink of bottles when he opens the fridge. As the cushion next to her sinks, she holds out her hand. There’s something so reassuring about not needing to see him to know he’s there. Leaning her shoulder against his, she takes a long sip of the cold beer.

“Anything good on?” he asks.

“Do you want to watch the news?” she asks dully. Finally, she glances at him again, right in time see the grimace.

“Is it immature to ask for something lighter?”

“Not at all,” she says. In fact, she’s relieved. She starts clicking through the channels again.

“I know we should keep informed, to see what’s changed after our trips, but after everything we see and do everyday, I want something—”

“Meaningless,” she hears herself say, “like you don’t want _think_.” Her agreement comes out harsher than she meant it and she is surprised by it. Even without her peripheral vision, she would know he is looking at her.

“I was going to say ‘trivial’, but… yes. Exactly.” His voice comes out husky, low.

Lucy knows she sounds cynical, even angry, but it doesn’t bother her. It’s a relief to know that someone knows it and accepts it. It’s a relief not to have to pretend to be fine all the damn time. He understands her, without judgement. She feels content to next to him, sipping her beer and clicking through commercials. It feels comfortable, safe.

“Wait, stop, go back one… is that Connery?” Flynn points at the screen and sure enough, there is a dashing, young Sean Connery swaggering in an expensive suit. “ _Now_ we’re getting somewhere,” he says, excitement colouring his voice.

“What movie is this?” Lucy asks, increasing the volume before, and reluctantly turning away from him, to the screen.

“Not sure, yet. I don’t recognize it.”

It’s not long after that though, that Connery enters a secret government building and identifies himself as double-o-seven to Moneypenny.

“Ah, good ol’ Bond!” Flynn chuckles, sitting up straighter.

“Of course you’re a fan,” Lucy says and with anyone else there would be an eye roll but watching Flynn’s eyes light up… it made her smile.

“You’re not? Well, I supposed meeting the man himself must make watching TV seem rather pedestrian!”

“Sh, we’re missing important plot details. Where is M sending Bond?”

“I didn't catch it. Can you turn it up a bit more?”

She obliges him and they hear about former Nazis teaming up with current KG-B spies.

“We’re getting a bingo card of villainy here,” Flynn muses and Lucy snorts.

“Sounds like your kind of party.”

“Not anymore… thankfully.”

They settle into the movie, enjoying the occasional playful banter, until Bond, talking to a brunette with angular features at a bar, an American operative, introduces herself as Lucy and announces that they had to get Castle Varlar as soon as possible. (The Nazis had a bomb!)

Lucy’s mouth drops open in horror and Flynn jerks upright, astonishment visible. She struggles, grasping desperately at the remote to change the channel, when Flynn snaps, “Don’t you dare!”

She groans, falling back into the couch and against him.

“This is us, our story…" he says in awe. "I knew Flemming pulled from his life, but I never thought that…”

“That he’d put us into fiction,” Lucy offers dryly.

“Wait, you _knew?_ ” Flynn turns to her suddenly, eyes wide. “You’re not surprised. You’re mortified, but you’re not surprised. You knew about this!”

“Yeah,” Lucy confesses with a sigh. “As soon as we got back from Germany we told Denise and Connor what happened and they told us about the movie.”

“That’s… wow.” He turns back to the television to watch the onscreen-Lucy introduce Bond to Wyatt and Rufus. Bond makes no reaction to Rufus being a black man at first. Lucy is relieved that he hadn’t been whitewashed, though she can’t help but notice that the actor is several shades lighter than the actual Rufus.

“Have you seen this before?” Flynn asks as they get a flash to villains. The Nazis are talking with a short and stalky dark-haired man with a thick East European accent. “Oh, is that me? He’s unpleasant looking, isn’t he?”

“I think it’s a fairly accurate portrayal,” Lucy teases him. She turns to catch his eye and even though he groans, he is smiling.

After a few minutes, Flynn presses her. “Seriously, have you never seen this before?”

“No,” Lucy admits. “I know Wyatt ran off to watch it, but… he never actually talked about it. I assumed it wasn’t very good and, well to be honest I didn’t have a lot of free time before. And I had that fiancé I didn’t know. And I was chasing you through every other century…”

He nods quickly. Onscreen, Bond and Rufus are talking. Bond is telling him that he has to stay out of the way, considering the Nazis wouldn’t warm up to him. Rufus in turn regales him with a lengthy story about his flying during WWII and being the best, if unrecognized, American pilot in the entire damn army.

“He gave him a good backstory, that’s nice,” Lucy comments.

“Very forward-thinking of the man. Rufus must have made quite the impression.”

“I guess we all did.”

They watch Flynn’s character swagger around, talk to the Nazis about his plans to extract them, and then catch and kill the spy (Bond!). The movie isn’t bad, a little formulaic, but not bad. It’s more surreal than anything else.

Lucy finds herself measuring it to her own memories before turning her attention to Flynn. He has pulled away from her and is leaning forward slightly, his brows pushed together. He looks so enraptured that Lucy can’t help but smile.

Onscreen, Flynn’s character and Bond have a fight that ends with Flynn’s character running away before Bond can question or kill him.

“How cowardly of you,” Lucy quips.

It’s Flynn’s turn to laugh. “I have to live to fight another day.”

“Die another day, more like.”

“Ha ha.”

Bond demands to know who Flynn’s character is and onscreen-Lucy tells him that he is a KG-B operative of Serbian descent.

“What?” Flynn yells. “Serbian—I—He doesn’t sound anything like a Serbian. And neither do I!”

“He just heard an east European accent—”

“And assumed they were interchangeable!”

“We’re missing the plot,” Lucy tells him.

“What plot,” he mutters, sulking.

To a certain extent he was right. In a brief intermezzo from the action, Bond and Lucy start to talk, discussing how young and new to the job Lucy is. They begin to kiss. And then the clothes start coming off.

She twists away from Flynn, sliding to the colder part of the couch seat. She isn’t sure why she’s embarrassed. Glancing at Flynn, she can see something behind his eyes. Without even wanting to, she flushes red. “This _never_ —”

“I would only assume this was his wildest fantasy. I mean, I can’t _blame_ the man.”

“Shut up!” She isn’t sure if she’s joking or not.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I just mean a mere mortal can only dream—” He clears his throat and abruptly falls silent.

It wasn’t judgement in his eyes she realized… it was something closer to longing. She doesn’t want to dwell on this. Staring hard at the screen, she tries to ignore Flynn, his warmth, only inches away, and the smell of his shampoo, which smelled something like raspberries.

Not long after, it becomes apparent to both of them why Wyatt never mentioned the movie. Wyatt’s character is captured and, after a bit of torture, gives up the necessary information about the plans and whereabouts of Bond, on the promise of letting him, Lucy and Rufus go free, before being promptly murdered.

Lucy flinches with the gunshot and turns away.

“It’s not real,” Flynn assures her. There is a strange quality to his voice, as if he is talking around a cotton ball. He turns to look at her.

“I know,” she says sharply, trying to shrug it off.

“It’s completely fic—”

“I know!” she snaps even louder.

He flinches and she regrets her sharpness. She doesn’t mean to push him away. The idea of him leaving, no matter how brief, is oddly painful. He wouldn’t leave though, not permanently, at least. She knows this. If there’s anything she’s learned from Salem, it’s that even if he did leave, he’d come back.

After some consideration, she inches closer and then leans against him. Without missing a beat, Flynn slips his arm around her shoulders. She can see the traces of a smile forming and she begins to relax.

It doesn’t last long.

Serbian Flynn catches up to Lucy.

“Oh no,” Flynn whispers and there isn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice. A look of dread forms across his face.

“Who knows,” Lucy says lightly, “maybe I’ll hold my—nope!” Serbian Flynn dispenses with demanding where Bond was in record time. He hits Lucy right across the face. “That’s sexist of you,” she tries to joke.

Flynn doesn’t respond. She can feel his body tense against hers.

Movie-Lucy hits Serbian Flynn right back and they begin to wrestle.

“Atta girl,” Flynn says and he relaxes slightly, briefly.

While movie-Lucy gets a few good shots in, it is not long before she is overpowered and strangled in a way that Lucy would only describe as unnecessarily drawn out. She finds herself staring at it, her likeness, in a sick fascination. Death and danger hover around the scene in the music and close-ups on Serbian Flynn’s hands.

All Lucy can think of are the times she was in danger from Flynn, but never in mortal peril. She mind drifts to the times that she wishes that he had killed her, back when she was her mother’s prisoner, believing Wyatt and Rufus to be dead.

“Let’s turn this off,” Flynn growls, pulling his arm from around Lucy to grab the remote.

“ _Don’t!_ ” she snaps.

“ _What?_ ” He sounds more horrified than outraged.

“I wanna see…”

“See what? I don’t want—”

“There’s Bond!”

The strangulation ends and another fight begins. The tension in Flynn’s body releases, as he breathes deeply, almost panting.

“We shouldn’t be too surprised,” Lucy muses. “Bond girls dying is kind of the trope.”

“He’s a piece of shit,” he mutters quietly, darkly.

“Don’t worry, Bond is killing him now.”

“I don’t mean the Serb.”

Lucy turns from the screen as Serbian Flynn, in his dying breath, reveals the whereabouts of an armed atomic bomb set to go off.

“It’s just a stupid movie,” Lucy tells him.

He says nothing for a long minute.

“Wanna turn it off?” she prods.

“So that’s how you escaped,” Flynn muses.

A quick glance at the screen tells Lucy that her counterpart is helping Bond escape through the priest’s tunnels. She grabs the remote and turns off the TV. They sit in silence in front of the black screen for a few minutes.

“That really got to you, huh?” she asks.

“I don’t like the idea of people hurting you.” He keeps staring ahead, his eyes dark.

Lucy is silent for a moment, feeling the words resonate inside her. “I’m okay, you know. None of that actually happened. Least of all from you. I mean, maybe back _before_ we teamed up…”

“I wouldn’t have done _that_ to you.” He genuinely looks disgusted. “I may have been tunnel-visioned and angry and ruthless, but I-I…” He sighs. “I don’t like the idea of anyone hurting you, least of all myself.”

Lucy supposes she’s known this for a while, but it is so strange to hear aloud. “You did grab me by the throat when you killed Lincoln,” she reminds him.

He turns to look at her suddenly and says, “I didn’t want—I… I’m sorry.” He pauses to draw breath before continuing, “I always regretted that. You startled me. How was I supposed to know you would charm your way into his private box? Though, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but… I never wanted to hurt you. At the theatre, I just wanted you out of the way. I didn’t want you to see me… I didn’t want you to seem me do _that_ , so I lost control. I wanted you not to see and then when I couldn’t have that I wanted you out of the way. I’m sorry.”

Lucy considers this slowly. “How many people have you killed? How could my seeing—”

“I thought about you so much, Lucy. I read your journal. You _gave_ me your journal. I knew we were going to work together, be together, depend on each other and I… I looked forward to that. I was _excited_ by it and I didn’t like the idea of you being scared of me or seeing the worst of me especially when you weren’t up to speed on Rittenhouse.”

Her toes curled involuntarily as he spoke. She took of sip of her now warm beer just to get another moment to think. She can think of only one reason for the warmth in her chest and she doesn't want to admit it to herself.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Lucy,” he says softly. He stares at her so intently that she wants to look away to relieve the pressure, but feels like she can’t. “I only ever wanted you by my side.”

Lucy has a moment where she forgets to breathe. Collecting herself, she makes herself smile. This feels too serious.

“And now you can’t get rid of me.” It’s meant to be a joke, but it comes out wrong. She tries again. “I feel like I should have all the answers,” she begins slowly, “but Garcia… I don’t have any. I know I gave you the journal and that was your playbook, but that scares me. I’m supposed to be this all seeing, all knowing—”

“You’re not! You’re supposed to be a human who lived through hell and is living through some more now. You’re like me, Lucy. You’re a survivor. I don’t need the journal for proof of that and neither should you.”

His words feel like they dislodge something inside of her, like a weight from chest. She exhales slowly. Not that long ago Garcia Flynn telling her “you’re like me” would have been an insult. Now it’s a compliment.

“Thank you, Garcia. And I’m glad by the way.”

“What about?” he asks, leaning forward slightly, the couch creaking.

“That you’re by my side.”

There’s a moment of surprise in his eyes and then, crow's feet crinkling, a giant, glowing smile spreads across his lips. Without realizing or intending it, she returns it. A warm feeling spreads across her chest.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! I had a lot of fun playing around with this idea. It came out angstier than I initially planned, but I'm still pleased. pls comment, kudos, or holler if you like it


End file.
